Category: Pennsylvania

Congratulations go to New Orleans Saints for winning their first Super Bowl Championship.

New Orleans and the entire state of Louisiana will celebrate and have bragging rights all year long. Only 15 states have ever had the honor of being the home state of a Super Bowl Champion.

What States have the most Super Bowl Champions?

California has the honor of being the state with the most football Super Bowl Wins. Its teams have won 8 of the 44 completed Super Bowls. Two teams have contributed to California’s rank as the Best State for Football Championships. The San Francisco 49ers have 5 wins and the Oakland Raiders have 3.

Pennsylvania is the second Best State for Football Championships with all 6 wins coming from the Pittsburgh Steelers, the team with the most Super Bowl wins. Texas is ranked as the third Best State for Football Championships with 5 wins, all by the Dallas Cowboys.

The state list of Super Bowl Winners is below:

Super Bowl Champions by State

What states are people moving to? Economists would say that you can learn a lot from people “voting with their feet.” They leave states for many reasons: economic opportunity, lower taxes, weather, cost of living etc.

Texas was the Best State to Move To in 2009. It had the most net people moves in the US, over three times more than any other state. It was also the most popular state to move to in 2008. Arizona and North Carolina, which was ranked 2 in 2008, were also popular states to move to. They were very close in net moves being separated by only 2 moves according to Allied Van Lines.

According to the annual magnet report, the Best States to Move To in 2009 were Texas, Arizona, North Carolina, Colorado and Florida.

The Worst States to Move To in 2009 were Michigan, Illinois,Pennsylvania, NewJersey and California. New York is also an unpopular state to move to. Both Illinois and New York have now lost population, according to the Allied study, for 33 straight years!! California lost people in 2009. Its 12.4% unemployment rate may have had something to do with this exodus. See also Taxpayers Leave New York and People Choose Best States to Live with their Feet

It should also be noted that this survey is not a definitive migration study. Florida, for example according to the Florida Bureau of Economic and Business Research, lost population in 2009 for the first time in 63 years. This is at odds with the Allied stats. See

23 States are now borrowing from the U.S. Government to pay for unemployment benefits. (California has borrowed $4.5 billion as of mid October 2009, the most in the nation.)

This is only the beginning of the bad news for states and employers. States will be borrowing more and taxing employers more in 2010. This will impact the willingness of companies to hire in the future. This is not good news for the job market.

For example, Florida, which has borrowed $465 million as of mid October, this past week increased its unemployment insurance tax on employers for next year quite substantially. The minimum tax will jump from $8.40 per employee to $100.30 – analmost 12-fold increase – while the maximum will go up from $378 peremployee to $459. Florida is facing a multitude of issues as it tries to dig itself out of the faltering economy. The Sun-Sentinel did a great piece this week highlighting how Florida is losing residents, jobs and borrowing $300 million per month to make unemployment payments. See Shrinking Florida faces tough choices as residents flee, jobs vanish

Arizona recently asked to borrow $600 million in federal funds to keep its jobless payments going. With its October 2009 unemployment rate of 9.3% Arizona will be needing to raise taxes on employers as well. It is currently estimated that Arizona will increase its tax 41.8% on employers in January 2010. See Arizona jobless funds running out

Most states will announce their unemployment tax rates for 2010 before year end and taxes will be increasing. This is bad news for employers and the outlook for jobs. The Heritage Foundation’s Foundry blog recently posted a good explanation on how these increases will further hurt the job market. See How Unemployment Taxes and Obama’s Stimulus Are Killing Jobs

The List of States Borrowing To Pay Unemployment Benefits follows. We added Arizona to the BLS list that was compiled as of October 19, 2009.

According to the Empire Center report, New York experienced the nation’s largest loss of residents to other states—a net domestic migration outflow of over 1.5 million, or 8 percent of its population at the start of the decade.This follows a 1.7 million loss in the 1990’s. Taxpayers are leaving New York. High income taxpayers, in particular, are leaving.

The States that benefited from New York’s migration losses were Florida, New Jersey, Connecticut, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.Florida gained over 314,000 taxpayers from NY representing a staggering $9.1 billion of tax base. It has no state income tax. New Jersey gained 167,067 taxpayers and $5.7 billion of tax base. North Carolina gained 82,169 and $1.85 billion. Connecticut gained 51,455 and $2.77 billion. Pennsylvania gained 88,961 and $1.52 billion. New York has lost over $29 billion in tax base in the 2000’s alone.

Tax policy for states must be established with a view of what other options people have. People have choices within the US as well as other countries regarding where to live and be taxed. People are voting with their feet in NY. They prefer lower tax rates. The chart below on New York Net Domestic Migration by Year is from the study. New York has lost almost 1 million people in the 2000’s to other states.

New York State is in a negative cycle downward. At some point it might look to draw more people in by lowering its rates. Unfortunately until it does so, people will keep leaving. The entire listing of taxpayer migration by state to (from) New York is listed below courtesy of the Empire Center for New York State Policy.

We ran our September 2009 Best and Worst States for Job openings. Job Openings dropped an alarming 6.2% on September 30 as compared to July 31. This is particularly discouraging as we had seen our only increase in job openings this year in July. This reversal ratifies the year long downward trend. We develop our analysis from data listed by the nation’s largest job posting service CareerBuilder.com. It is a good proxy for job openings nationwide.

Job Openings nationwide shrank in September to 217,040 from 231,370 in July, a drop of 14,330 job openings.

48 States saw jobs shrink. Alaska, NorthDakota, South Dakota and Montana saw the biggest percentage job opening losses. KentuckyJobs, with an increase of only 180 job openings. and Utah Jobs, up 30, were the TopStates for Jobs and the only 2 states in the nation that showed improvement since July 31.

CaliforniaJobs shrank the most numerically with an 1197 loss at September 30. Texas Jobs, Florida Jobs and Pennsylvania Jobs showed large losses in numbers in September. ( I will post analysis of Job Opening Losses during the Obama Administration after unemployment numbers are released for September)

The list of Best and Worst States for Jobs as of September 2009 follows:

With the U.S. unemployment rate now at the 25 year high of 9.4%, some in the media have suggested it is good news that the rate of job loss is slowing. While there may be a glitter of hope in the lower number of job loss filings, the fact is job openings must improve in order to start absorbing the unemployed. The question is when will corporations start hiring more and where. The U.S. unemployment rate will not improve until job openings increase.

Best and Worst States analysis shows that job openings on careerbuilder.com have dropped 10.6% from Jan 29 to May 31 2009. Job openings less than 30 days old decreased to 210,048 as of May 31, 2009 from 235,059 as of January 29, 2009. More importantly, job openings dropped further since March 14, 2009 when we last reported. Job losses dropped 1.4% from 213,077 to 210,048. One might cheer at only a 1.4% loss in 45 days but if your portfolio declined about 1% per month you should consider this alarming. We are still losing job openings at the alarming rate of 1% per month. This is not what recoveries are built upon.

More importantly, all 10 of the biggest states have seen job opening drops since January. These 10 states represented 54% of all the open jobs on Career Builder in May. These states have seen a drop in openings of 12.25% since January, larger than the country average. Illinois was the Worst State for Job Openings with a decline of 20.4%. California at 16.6% decline was the second Worst State for Job Openings. New York at minus 14.3%, New Jersey at minus 13.2% and Pennsylvania at minus 10.6% job opening loss round out the 5 Worst States for Job Openings.

8 States showed improvement in job openings since January. These states showed small job increases. The Best State for Job Opening Improvement was South Carolina. Its job openings increased by only 237 or 7.6%. Kentucky at 134 and Indiana at 133 were the only other states that saw job openings improve by greater than 100.

Here is the listing of Job Openings by State for May 31,2009 as compared to Jan 31, 2009.

Finally, the recent drop is all the more alarming as there has been a headwindof positive stimulus. The U.S. American Recovery and Reinvestment Actwas signed into law on February 14, 2009 about one month prior to ourlast measurement. March was also the bottom of the stock market dropwith a strong rally of 25.6% in the Dow from March to May. Onewould expect improvement in view of the great wealth effect of thestock market and the government stimulus. We will update more fully job changes since March when the stock market began to recover in an upcoming post. Signs of encouragement for job openings are not yet strong.

Insurance.com publishes a monthly listing of car insurance rates. We thought you might like to see March results.

We also thought it might be interesting to see if safe drivers as measured by the annual GMAC driver safety study had a measurable benefit in insurance rates.

The Best State for Car Insurance is Vermont with an estimated annual premium of $1,304. It ranks 18 in the GMAC Safe Driver Study. The 4 other Best States for Car Insurance, i.e. the lowest premiums, are Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin and Idaho. The safest state of the top 5 according to GMAC is Idaho with a safe driver rank of 4. The safest driver state, Kansas, ranks 22 in car insurance premiums.

The Worst State for Car Insurance,( we put DC in a world of its own), is Louisiana with a premium of $2617 more than double that of Vermont!!! It also ranks 44 on the GMAC Safe Driver Study. New Jersey the Worst State for Safe Driving in the US has one of the highest car insurance rates rate just below Louisiana. Rounding out the WorstStates for Car Insurance are Delaware, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. All these state rate below average in the GMAC study.

Of the popular retirement states Tennessee is best rated for low premiums at 11. Arizona at 25 and Florida at 36 are more middle of the pack

Car Insurance rates have dropped over the last 6 months yet are still higher than a year ago. From a look of the list it appears that drivers who know the rules of the road benefit from safer roads and lower car insurance premiums. It may be beneficial for insurance companies to offer discounts to drivers who take a car exam annually that demonstrates they know the rules of the road.

The Tax Foundation recently released their 2009 Tax Freedom Day Study. It measures how many days the average worker must work to pay taxes. There is a wide disparity among states. The tax burden you bear can significantly impact your quality of life.

The Best State for Tax Freedom is Alaska where it takes 82 days almost 25% of the year just to pay taxes. Louisiana, Mississippi, South Dakota, North Dakota and West Virginia are also rated Best States for Tax Freedom. If you are not retired, these states would be considered as candidates for Best States to Work.

The Worst State for Tax Freedom is Connecticut where it takes 120 days or until April 30 to pay taxes. If you live in Connecticut 1/3 of your time every year goes to pay taxes to the Federal, State and Local governments. That is almost 50% more days than Alaska. New Jersey, New York, California and Maryland are also rated Worst States for Tax Freedom.

According to the Tax Foundation study, five major categories of tax dominate the tax burden. Individual income taxes, both federal and state, require 38 days’ work. Payroll taxes take another 27 days’ work. Sales and excise taxes, mostly state and local, take 15 days to pay off. Corporate income taxes take 6 days, and property taxes take 12. Americans will log 4 more days to pay other miscellaneous taxes, most notably including motor vehicle license taxes and severance taxes, and about 1 day for estate taxes.

What state you live in is very important in determining your lifestyle as higher cost of living states tend to have higher tax burdens. Lower disposable income is the result. Many states are also increasing many taxes due to economic conditions which will increase tax burdens. Noteworthy examples are the proposed increases in New York and California that will make these heavily burdened states more undesirable to live. If you are not retired, New York and California would have to be considered as 2 of the Worst States to Work.

The February 2009 State Unemployment numbers were released this past week and they were not pretty. Every state in the U.S. saw its unemployment rate increase.

Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) also released March Unemployment, along with Feb state data, and the nationwide unemployment rate increased again to 8.5% nationwide. It was 8.1% in February.

Seven States had unemployment above 10% in February. Michigan was the Worst State for Jobs with a whopping 12% unemployment number. South Carolina, Oregon, North Carolina, California Rhode Island and Nevada also qualify as Worst States for Employment as the 6 other states with unemployment above 10% .

The Best State for Jobs based on a low 3.9% unemployment is Wyoming. 4 other states qualify as Best States forEmployment with rates still below 5%. They are: Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Iowa.

Some of the state year on year changes are quite large. Unemployment increased by over 100% from last year in Hawaii and Oregon for example. Of the large states, Texas is holding up the best with unemployment of only 6.2% in February which was below the U.S. Feb average of 8.1%.

State data is released with a one month lag so expect March state unemployment to get even worse as unemployment increased nationwide in March by .4%.

Virginia is the Best State for Presidents with 8 Presidents born in its state. Ohio is second with 7. Massachusetts and New York with 4 are ranked third. Many states have no Presidents.

George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson and William Henry Harrison were all born before the U.S. became a country. Their colonies later became states and are reflected as such in the table.